Sunday, 9 September 2012

RIGHT TO EDUCATION

Education cannot be limited to the classrooms. It has to go
beyond the doors of universities and step out into the real world to meet the
real people out there.

In a developing nation that we are and moving on to the
developed stage the only bridge of connection could be education. The right to
education act today is a specific move to do just the same.

For a nation however where many sleep hungry it is not easy
to implement this act. India has to first get rid of its poverty. India has to
work hard to make its very rich a little less rich and its very poor a little
less poor. This however cannot be done by robbing the rich of their wealth and
packing it up in the empty bags of the poor. Here the role of education comes
to rescue. People have to be trained to
collect what they need and not more and also to learn to work hard to collect
their needs.

Also our country is deeply covered in the blankets of
casteism and classism where there is an unnecessary worth given to a high class
or a high caste person robbing the dignity of an individual who belongs to a
lower class or caste. Education will help eradicate such nonsense beliefs.

Education broadens the vision of an individual. After all
each of us will have to depart from this journey of life. When our time of
departure will come will not have a bother about a seat or a reservation. Our
flight beyond will be confirmed and certainly on the ordained time. Our luggage won’t be our priced possessions
which we probably would have collected with all the wealth accumulated with or
without education. But our priced possession which will certainly form our
luggage will be our good deeds. W e won’t even have to bother about a passport
for our humanity will be it. Our love will be our visa. The more we will have
learnt to love all on the journey of life the more our stay will be guaranteed.
And our quality education will give us the business class journey which will
give a great comfort to our soul.

However how will the
education in our schools or colleges give us the right direction to move on?
Our system has made us into rats running the rat race to win not realizing that even if we successfully win the race we
will be winning rats. But I do not want to be a prized rat. I want to move above the competitive
instinct the education in my nation imparts to me. I want to move on
beyond competition to contribution and
transform my life from being a celebration.

The right to education will teach us, every individual to
celebrate the light of knowledge which
will prevent us to grovel in the darkness of bribes . intruthfullness,
bitterness, pride, ego, unlawfulness, and many other such imperfect fullnesses
which will rob us of our human worth and make us empty within.

Education will help us create our destinies. Education will guide each one
of us to act, speak and think in a dignified manner. A manner worthy of humans.
Education will bind us into a thick and a strong team of people who will
understand that beyond being hindus, muslims, Christians, parsees, jews, Sikhs,
we all are humans. It will help us to understand that when one man dies, his
marks of blood will dirty the clothing of all of us. It will make us
intelligent out of the idiots that we are where we will realize that in war
there are no winners but only losers. When one team loses more than the
other it cannot be rightly called a
winner overlooking its loss. Only an idiot will do that. They say that ‘history
repeats itself’ and we have been learning history since ages. Then why are there no end to
wars? Was not world war I and II enough
to teach the people that wars only bring suffering . more to some and less to
some? If this basic fact cannot be understood by the educated people then there
is need for a change in our education.

The right to education therefore I believe should be not
just to enroll the masses in basic
primary, secondary and higher secondary education but to broaden their vision
with the right education. To bring in an example I would like to share a story
where a student studying religion, married and with a child had to find a part
time job to survive. He found this job in a bar as a bartender and was worried
that if the dean of his education institution were to learn about this he would
be disqualified. Anyways he had no option but to go ahead with the job or else
he would not even have the fees to pay
for his tuitions. Sooner or later the information he had tried to hide he knew
would reach the ears of his dean. Rather than live in tension he decided to one
day go himself and reveal the matter to the dean. When he gathered enough
courage to do the same he was surprised at the reaction of the dean. The dean
looked at him intently and said congratulations. This came as a sudden surprise to the student
who had never expected such. The dean however told him that he would get first
hand learning experience at the bar as only suffering souls would be a large
number of its customers. As a student of religious philosophy he would have
ample opportunity to practice his lessons in practical at the bar to transform
all those suffering souls. However the deal advised him three things, namely,
have a broader vision, don’t be judgemental and be a part of the change. The
day we will have such teachers , all the students of our nation will form a
mass of revolution which will make a difference not only to our country but to
the world at large. Such a mass revolution will have revolutionary ideas which
will come back to us by paying attention to the great words of great masters
whom we have neglected in the syllabus of our modern times. When we will begin
to focus on the great forgotten or neglected wisdom of those seers, we will
learn that though ‘in every religion there is love, yet love has no religion!’
Rumi

The right to education where our government wants every
citizen to be educated is of course an excellent idea but what I feel is that
our government must pay more attention to the right education, since the
education that we have got till now has not prevented us from blowing up our neighbours.

The government must very attentively focus on educating its
children who must be urgently taught to prevent wars and not instead be killed
for some idea taught to them as life is a holy gift which must be nurtured and
not be blown up. Its high time our society get the right to share love instead
of hate, antagonism, envy and destruction.

Feelings of love must be so strong in every educated man to
stand up against any injustice not only in his land but also in any part of his
world as he today is taught that he is a global citizen.

As we sit here today writing this essay how many of us are
thinking about the innocent being butchered in Syria? Why even go as far as
Syria, how many of us know about Dardpora – a small village in Kashmir where
its male population has gone extinct due to the strife of two countries? How many of us educated people would want to
bring home those suffering ,lonely,and
scared women into our homes. What is the use of our education if we can
read about the sad happening s in the world but do nothing about it in our own
small way? The right to education must
be therefore urgently changed to the right education. An sms on my mobile reflects my educated level when I read a joke which says that when the father
of our nation was present he saved the innocents with the knowledge of law but
now that he is no more how will we succeed in saving our innocents. And a statement further states that we will do so
with his picture on our currency notes. As I read this. If a smile comes on my
lips I need to reflect on my education . again I say its not the right to
education but the need to be rightly educated.

A great English poet has said that a country is not known by
its architecture made by its educated men or its great palaces built by its
experts but by men of values and
morals then even if the country has a
few ragged houses, it will still be a great country. Our country today has
great rising sky scrappers but can we say the same for our ground floor value
system?

These are some of the questions I think the right to
education needs to inquire into. To inquire rightly will itself be a good
beginning of moving towards real intelligence beyond the borrowed one from the
books. The right education will help us to move beyond ordinary convictions,
opinions, assertions and denials. Simplicity will then become the crown of
education.

The wise man knows himself to be a fool but the fool doth
know himself to be wise ‘ was said centuries ago by William Shakespeare but the
truth of those words have stood the test of time. The moment we say ‘we know’
we are on the path of ignorance but when we say ‘we do not know’ and display
our ignorance , it is the beginning of wisdom as ‘the first step towards wisdom
is the acceptance of ignorance.

The wise men of our government have come up time and again
with innovative ideas to rightly inculcate education in the lives of the poor
who are their responsibility by putting them into door step schools or forcing
them into the international schools but have they furnished the international
level rich to be humbled enough with the right education to open their class
doors to the lower classes? Have they thought of the embarrassment and the
neglect the poor will feel in such situations?
Before inculcating the right education won’t it be a folly on the part
of governance to introduce such right to education?

To sum it I would like to say that it is only in the
simplicity of our knowledge will we understand and learn that to learn is not
to accumulate knowledge, things or relationships. We all certainly have the
right to education for such right education.